Innovation, Prescription and Pedagogy : Which English is presented in English language teaching materials published in Italy in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries?

The analysis of language teaching materials does not only provide tangible evidence of the implementation of methods but may also yield important information about the type and nature of language that has acted as input and normative reference for language learners in different contexts and different times. Previous research into ELT (English language teaching) materials as sources of information about English language norms and usage has almost exclusively targeted materials aimed at native English speakers. This article shifts the focus on to ELT materials aimed at learners of English as a foreign language, in particular Italian learners of English. The study is based on two highly successful ELT textbooks published in Italy between the second half of the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th centuries. Through a grammaticological investigation, the study seeks to provide a picture of the kind of English that is presented in historical Italian ELT materials, focusing in particular on how these materials evaluate syntactic changes occurring in English at the end of the 19th and into the 20th centuries.

L’analisi dei libri di testo per l’insegnamento linguistico non fornisce solamente esempi concreti di come siano stati interpretati i metodi glottodidattici nel corso dei secoli, ma può dare informazioni importanti riguardo al tipo e alla natura di lingua che è stata utilizzata come input e riferimento normativo in contesti ed epoche differenti. Questo saggio si propone di analizzare due tra le più importanti grammatiche della lingua inglese per italofoni pubblicate tra la seconda metà del XIX e i primi decenni del XX secolo. L’analisi mira a evidenziare che tipo di inglese viene presentato nei due libri di testo e come vengono presentate e discusse alcuni importanti innovazioni a livello sintattico che interessarono la lingua inglese a cavallo del XIX e XX del secolo.